


Branches

by graspthesanity



Series: C. Year Zero [2]
Category: Marilyn Manson (Band), Mechanical Animals - Marilyn Manson (Album), Nine Inch Nails (Band)
Genre: Alien power, Fascination with humans, Gay Aliens, M/M, love potions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:52:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23319409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graspthesanity/pseuds/graspthesanity
Summary: A fascination for humans runs in Marilyn's alien family, but saving a human's life personally takes things to a different level in a world where appearances mean more than ever before.
Relationships: Marilyn Manson/Trent Reznor
Series: C. Year Zero [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684438
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

Relax. Relax. Relax.

And I ran, ran.

Fell. By the time I could see the light forming on tears of the fauna, I could feel a cat… A dog? Licking my face and I hissed at it. I grabbed its food bowl, which ended up in a fight for a couple of droplets of water gathered in the night. The thing had managed to drink enough of it. I didn’t really focus on studying other life forms. I just-

Didn’t matter.

All I knew was that we were always deemed to be intelligent and fucking attractive.

I turned around, I was alone with the damn dog.

I stayed that way, crossed legs and letting that thing pull my hair for quite a few moments until it became dark again and frozen water went from under the globe, as if I were a cheap gift. I laid down and curled up, wishing I could do a snow angel, like they said everyone should do on Earth if given the chance, but instead I fell asleep once more.

I woke up under heavy covers seeing a very distressed human, closing all windows now. A shot gun was between us, I wondered if he did it as a method for me to shoot him. Did he want to die?

He lifted it up, he tumbled into the sofa and drank what seemed to be… a hard-stench drink of sorts, diluted with some sweet juice. Fruity. His dark eyes looked at me, as I flinched as the previous catdogcat sat next to me, licking my bare toes.

“There’s a quarantine outside.” I looked outside into the icy water forming shapes out of nearly nothing.

“Isn’t it… Lent?”

“Christmas.”

“It’s been that long?” I turn around.

“Yeah.”

“Where’s everyone then?”

“…Dead.” I shudder at his sudden choice of wording, as he pulls the shotgun closer to himself and I watch him raise it at me, his hands rushing, tingling, itching and spiralling a sif he were to shoot me and sell me, but instead it’s at his temple.

“My wife died from C. last night.” He says nearly voiceless. “That’s why there’s no Jesus or God to celebrate… We’re in a spiral, where we all try to survive loss. But it doesn’t happen, little Alien.”

I swallow loudly.

It’s as if none had drank in this room for days and my saliva was the only fluid.

“No point in selling your skin… eyes… cock… We’re all fucked.” I stand up and he presses the gun harder against himself, holding his fascinating life hostage. I see it through cracks as he shields the best sex he’s had to yesterday’s hysterical cry when she died in his arms, quarantined, he had torn all the crosses and prayers around her, which were supposed to heal her.

I can’t heal him. She’s dead. He’s dead… in a way, isolation means death to humans. Sometimes I get that, maybe that’s why I visit here… To understand my estranged mother, who had a fascination with humans until she herself died.

It seems strange how humans start hating the other sex, gender and I’ve even seen a girl tattoo her own body to hold onto some obscure ideology because her boyfriend wasn’t who she once imagined him to be. Others tear down posters… And now it’s just a question of life and death.

I know I won’t die and I asked myself, why did I want to see the end of this species? We’ve tried it all… Taking samples, watching DNA strands… It was as if they wanted to die for good. As if they had convinced and cursed themselves to be very much mortal. She died because she wanted to… Maybe because their God intended that.

I watched the man cry and want to believe in an afterlife… But if you created your own death, why would you have an afterlife? It was painful to grow into a fucking tree. But I couldn’t tell him that, so I walked over to him as he started crying harder and harder. I started hearing barking from closing doors and the lights started flickering, the television was turning itself on like a candle. I stretched my arms to feel the energy and construct her death in front of my eyes and his vanishing smile.

I took the gun away from him, when I noticed his eyes wide open.

I hadn’t noticed the silencer.

I closed his eyes.

I watched him for hours, the police threatened to kick me out.

No one understood Year Zero for humanity.

It’s spirals and turns, how everyone became everyone.

And yet, I kissed him, right on the mouth, my hair shielding our intimated moment, my small wrists holding him down as my tongue slithered in and closed his hole, did stitches and he was good.

He gasped, pushing me away…

Now pointing the gun at me and the new policemen.

I never liked police.

I closed my eyes.

They would always ask me dumb questions and lead me to the same scientists, treat me like a criminal in 51. I would always walk through a wall, a bunch of buzz head idiots screaming:

This is American soil!

I would burn them to the ground, earning another scar on my wrist later when I’d get back home. Mom said to harm yourself when you’d kill one and I would do it gingerly… Because no matter how stupid a creature seemed, it was their turn to die when they wanted. When they were at peace and we were not Gods to take it away from them.

I knew that mom was never proud of me, even if she claimed the opposite. Maybe it was some sort of Plato’s cave effect which she would tell me about. I would get tired, drained and I would collapse in my part of the spaceship, allowing the critters from Earth play with my hair and their bites wouldn’t affect me the more I grew. I walked about as if in a cemetery, even letting mom grow into a tree after her death, her final desire, to be like a human.

Just like many she would make herself look appealing before I even existed. She cheated on my father and left him. We spoke a few times. I would watch him, he kept his appearances like a human would. They were both interested. He had a faulty eye. We’d drink together in bars, walk around and then go our ways, I wouldn’t even play the guitar he gifted me which I had wanted from mom so much. Because we’re taught that, aren’t we? That mothers are great and fathers… not so much. Maybe we got that from Earth too. I didn’t know.

I felt lonely, as I rocked him back to life.

His dishevelled hair would be in my lap, the officers leaving us alone. Saying something about respecting inter alien relationships and homosexual ones… But where were they?

Why was there a fashion of people saying they were alien and hating others?

Planting bombs into soil and killing one another? Is that really the image they had of us?

He breathed as if he was underwater, so I had kiss him again and he kept trying to push me away, some concept of monogamy twisted in his head. But soon he fainted with the right pull of the earlobe and I laid with him in bed.

Wondering…

Why.

If I pictured it…

Why did I want it again?

I closed my eyes and slept. To wake up to a trembling Trent at night, bawling and I just watched him, stretching my hand but he just screamed that he wanted to be dead.

I said there was no fun, only pain to become a fucking tree.

He said he didn’t care.

I called him a human and he shot me down. Trembling, storming out, as I healed myself with my long tongue, bending over and when he came back from the kitchen, he held a love potion.

…Just like the one my mother kept using on the human man she loved. To ditch my father. Everything to fall out of love. Trent drank it and turned on the telly. I watched him, wondering…

What had I done to anger the human?


	2. Chapter 2

It was strange to have a mother obsessed with another species up to the point that I was questioned whether I was half human and I honestly didn’t know. It didn’t compare to the discrimination I’d feel with humans, when we’d go on trips.

Why Trent?

Because he was the first human I encountered with. I was small and he gazed into my big eyes, but dad grabbed me way before I could even say anything. But I knew he wanted to ask why my eyes were the colour they were and why my hair was this colour. It wasn’t anything new to say, but he still pulled me off the swing.

Maybe Trent was the first crush, no matter at when I’d visit Earth, and the time it would take for me to forget him and get used to him. But he was married and just like monogamy ends lives, so did it my love. Plucking all the daisies from fields and burning down trees, screeching like a wounded animal I set myself on fire to match my eyes, but I couldn´t burn from something that needed oxygen as fuel.

We didn’t talk for a while and now here we were. Trent didn´t want to talk or recall, because we all face a small erasure of memories, so we could´ve had been lovers the whole time and I wouldn’t remember it and sleep with lust until I would reach my end, by stretching out my arms and falling into the abyss, understanding that I no longer serve a purpose in ships. That´s how our death went. A void. Not a blackhole, those were painful. Humans on the other hand could live without purpose, but mom still died unlike the human way.

I woke up to a punch, with him screeching that he would be loyal to his wife. I apologized, my heart bursting in all pools of blood, as he just walked over to his kitchen, a small house very outside the city. I didn’t know how a person who wanted solitude would survive here, but yet he did, doing woodwork and hunting, sometimes other odd jobs and his wife… Was really trying to leave him.

Once she cried to me, that she never understood him and we hugged, it felt strange to have my hair tangled in hers in the wind, comforting, making Trent think that I was a friend.

The brain works in mysterious ways, while humans think that it’s all the heart. I felt tired, my whole body aching from being on Earth so little. I’d have to be here for a while, so walking into town was odd. I knew that C. was happening, but seeing it affect the homeless first hand, wipe the population with alcohol and drugs, give them a further addiction just to crucify themselves for the sins. I recall watching telly at Trent’s as different Popes were praying for different mistakes caused by humanity starting from capitalism and ending with car crashes or condom flavours.

But the more they prayed, the less answers they got.

I ended up buying food for a very hefty sum, but I had money left from previous trips, money which many didn’t have and figured to leave the rest for Trent. I showed up with food, but he was sitting outside where the grave apparently was and it felt like she was with us. I didn’t understand the need for a grave, if she was surely a tree by now, but he left it so. Maybe because people were too prone to keep their own traditions in order. Hatred was a tradition, mom would say, because some traditions would slip by their mind, but hatred, wars and destruction was sometimes debated to be the essence of humans rather than love and compassion, it was a world where the individual strived, yet the pack failed. And now all individuals were failing.

Connections were growing weak, people were falling apart and suddenly nothing mattered anymore. It was as if all of humanity had found out that we were all bystanders in this God’s vision. We didn’t matter as a blip in time. What mattered were the rocks in the sky and tranquillity, our species learned that the hard way… But humans were destroying themselves little by little, running away, not looking back, pushing through others, making grabbing some, but letting the wave of despair hit them like a tsunami in the end.

Trent eventually got me out of his bed, because I felt uncomfortable in the middle of the night… Knowing the current fate of humanity and wondering when the appropriate time was to call upon Trent to go elsewhere… Anywhere. Look at God and eternity in the eyes and not become a fucking tree that requires oxygen, but wait until this shell was over, rebuild if needed and continue as such to the universe’s end. When God would blink and all of us would change, die, together, holding hands, knowing that… we’ve done it all.

I hadn’t noticed that I slipped into sleep again, as Trent had wrapped me into the futon and put me in his car and we were driving. I quickly flicked the radio, not to kill the silence, which Trent seemed to be thankful for but for some perspective on what was going on.

“Fuck.” I just said as the total number of dead was rising and the Earth was getting covered in veiny greenery. The oldest deaths had started growing with moss, making some gross green activists happy that the plague of humanity was leaving forever. I looked at Trent, wondering where we even going to. I pushed my red hair back, wrapping myself warmer into the futon. We only stopped at night, barely talking through… I had slept the whole day apparently. But Trent took me to a diner and we sat there, waiting for the orders and watching the sky from the windows. It was as if more disaster would come. I pressed my hand on the glass surface and felt it’s cool, then tracing my nails upon its surface, as Trent watched me.

“What did you do to the love potion?” I asked him. Trent shrugged and leaned down onto the table, facing the window, as I traced my nails on the glass again, but it was barely giving a sound. I was interested why had he held it in the first place.

“Hope that when I want to fall in love, I will.”

“Why don’t you want to do it… normally?” I asked and I wondered if he would laugh, knowing that an alien had asked him that, when emotions were more activated by human nature and more unique, precise.

“Because I never will again.” He sighed.

I just went back to scratching the glass until a waitress came and agreed to Trent’s order of a bottle of whiskey to keep sipping through the night. What was the police anyway?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've just slowly been loving this story. Hope you will too!


	3. Chapter 3

Mom liked confession boxes. Even if she wasn’t human, she could fish out any sin, she would torment the priests who generally would state that they have a ‘no aliens’ policy, the church being the church and all, but she would still go and talk.

I watched Trent enter the confession box and he gave me a long stare, a quite pissed off, ‘please stop looking at me’ stare, so I put my hands behind me and walked a bit further into the church. I didn’t hear what they were talking about, but this church was prettier than usual. It had mosaics, paintings, and a ceiling full of different biblical events.

Another memory sprang of my mother, but I didn’t let it play out.

I was tired of her memories fogging up my mind. Sometimes I wanted to explore Earth by myself, without her impression of it, remembering a soggy first few years after birth where me and dad were just confused from her Earth-addicted actions. Frankly, if it weren’t for Trent I wouldn’t have cared either.

“Alien!” I didn’t notice that I had sat next to a portrait of Virgin Mary. I flinched and saw a little boy, which his mother about to hurry out of the church. They went past me and I rolled my eyes, used to it, before some assistant or whatever came up to me and strictly coughed.

“No aliens. Even in the time of C. You don’t even get C. Why would you pray for a God you don’t believe in and spite so heavily, Marilyn?” I jerked at my name and looked at him, as if were crazy, but he was, with his different coloured eyes and jaw shaking, as if it would foam like a dog’s.

“I’m waiting…” I signalled towards the confessions box.

“You-You! Want to repent?” Eyebrows were raised at Trent exited the booth and went outside, not looking backwards, as I tried to motion to him to help me with this lunatic priest.

“No, I-” I mumbled.

“You should repent for what you did to Christ, the Redeemer in Rio… Crashing a space craft into our saviour… No wonder-”

“It wasn’t me! Not all aliens even look the same!”

“You’re just a passer-by in this world. That’s all you are… You filthy little…”

In the span of this wonderful discussion the priest had taken out the knife and I had bitten his shoulder, choking on his blood, but licking my lips. He cried for the nuns, but I had taken his knife.

Jesus was crashed into… about 20 years ago, when we first came, thinking the planet had no signs of life. Breathing with oxygen? Not with us.

I stabbed his coloured eyes, causing him to let out the scream of a child being first born, I threw the knife on the floor and left, letting him bleed blind. I kept walking, without knowing that Trent had driven off without me.

I stood there, mid-state, wind gushing and snow about to fall, wishing myself a lovely holiday.

It started snowing harder by each passing minute. Only then I noticed the trees, all cut down and only the flesh ones stood, making a cemetery around the church. I didn’t want to go back there, let alone turn around. So I went on the road and kept heading towards the dinner, where Trent bought his whiskey and gulped it. Now nothing mattered.

I wasn’t surprised that when I reached the diner, I was freezing, coughing and shaking. Not to mention that Trent wasn’t there. I ordered a coffee, getting refills every time the lady walked past and I seemed to be sitting, waiting, watching the door for Trent, that he would turn around and find me.

Hours passed, like the heart breaks, with time it gets worse. Sometimes it fades… But when it’s supposed to be real, it aches, you go numb and just watch the rest of your life unfold. I didn’t even know how much coffee I could consume. Neither did I want to go home. So I sat there, tapping on the mug, holding down tears and not caring about how my red hair looked. It looked unnatural like my entire being to humans.

Mom wished she could’ve stripped off her original porcelain skin and reveal a human woman beneath.

Thinking of it now… Maybe she had a lover. In a twist of fate… I just didn’t give the potion, while she claimed to be selling many of hers, so why wouldn’t she use one?

The problem was that Trent could’ve been anywhere… He could’ve even died of C. now.

I closed my eyes and what seemed like seconds, was to me waking up with a heavy quilt over me. Trent was nowhere to be seen still. I sighed and turned around, held in the diner, maybe to get reported to the police later and that’s when I curled up and cried.

There are always things to say, which die in your mouth.

I ended up having breakfast, lunch and dinner there for three days. I thought Trent to be dead by now, my lips in a narrow line of mourning and anger. I was also without contact to reach home. I always was. It was all about exploring like my late mother.

I slept each night in the dinner, sleeping less each night and not knowing who to thank for all this human kindness, which was a rare quality these days.

I went back to the church that night.

I walked in and saw a hanging Trent on a cross, his hands and feet nailed.

“What the fuck…” My voice trailing off, as I jumped on a nearby bench, which was used to pray and I saw all the blood pooling at the end of the cross.

I grabbed one arm, while my legs were around his waist and I was trying to get the nail out.

Trent mumbled something under his breath… But I couldn’t hear until a very loud noise came out of his mouth and a screech followed as his arm fell limp to his side, safe from the nail now. I proceeded to do the same, but he grabbed my neck with his hand, shaking and full of blood. Eyes stained from crying blood… Like Christ portrayed.

“Let me suffer…”

My eyes widened and that’s when I raided his jacket, as he started angrily asking me what was it that I was searching for. I found it…

“No, Marilyn, no, no, no, no-” He started chanting, attracting a crowd of nuns, which surely knew who I was, but they kept watching me like I was the antichrist. I was. Taking their Jesus away from their necks.

“I’ll fucking give you meaning, Trent.” And I forced the bottle into his mouth, slapping him to drink it, breathing heavily until the liquid was gone.

He chocked, hiccups following as it was getting digested and I proceeded to get the second nail out, to an angry mob of nuns.

“JESUS! JESUS! JESUS!”

“Summon your demon!” I screeched back at them, as Trent fell with the last nail removed on my back. The nuns were all scared, reaching for crosses, applying the word of God to me, as Trent was asleep. I walked towards them, much taller.

My hair red, no brows, porcelain skin, no veins to show and with Trent on my back.

I narrowed my eyes at them. One flung a cross towards me and it just fell on the floor.

I bit my tongue very hard and spat blood at them, causing a ruckus with even the blind priest running out, all blindfolded, trying to grasp onto something.

I started laughing and ran outside, Trent feeling way too light. I raided his pockets again and grabbed the two lighters he carried around, in case one wouldn’t work and lit the whole goddamn church on fire.

“God won’t save you…” I said to the fire… “Even from C.”


	4. Chapter 4

Why do we settle?

Why do we stop?

Or are we running then? Circles, a marathon? What is it?

Trent wakes up, as I’m sipping Coke through a straw in the diner. He takes one glance at me, a sleepy, hazy… look, hair all over the place. I show him my tongue.

He grabs both my hands and presses his head against the table. I look down at him. This isn’t how I ever wanted it to happen. But then neither did I want to a burn a church down… that badly. I frown as he holds my hands together, his lips gracing my hands. Effect is always immediate.

That’s how mom got dad. Then the effect wears off and you’re left in insecurity.

I was angry

I was angry

When I knew the full story, I yelled at mom that it was deceiving someone. How could she have done it? I remember shouting at her that of course dad fled. I said that I would flee as well, watching the insufferable woman-

And now

I was doing the same mistake.

I was taking Trent away from his mourning, as I straightened up…

Suddenly it felt like the worst idea in the history of ideas. My head was foggy. I felt like I was going through a trip. I didn’t want this.

I didn’t want to hear how much someone loved me, not because I was a cold, malnourished of compassion alien, but because… I didn’t want it now. I could change moods. I could change everything which was wrong about myself… But instead I felt like a sadist, running around with my flaws, which would unravel my insanity. I was unreliable if I were to tell my own story and I would lie again.

I looked at Trent’s sleepy, in love eyes and closed my own.

“I did it to save you…” The words left my mouth.

I shot her down.

I don’t know where she is.

When the hospital called… I didn’t know what to say other than that I didn’t care if they cut off her tubes.

I opened my uneven eyes.

“…When I shouldn’t have. I went… thinking that life is worth living. Yet, I burnt down a church.” I darkly laughed as I said it.

“Let’s burn churches together.” Was what Trent said to me and in a moment I got caught up in heart eyes, but then I suddenly let go of hands. I couldn’t leave him. But neither did I have anything to strive for.

I don’t want to be loved…

Like this…

With no reason.

Then it’s the same as family fluids, which can be broken.

It reminds me of how mom wasn’t in love and then she was loved by someone else. I lowered my eyes. Wondering where the other alien woman was. They shared one adventure together and it took them a while to be torn apart, mainly by the end my mom seemed to have started falling in love, but it was too late then. Mom had a fog of a sexuality, where she would love everyone if there was something complicated about them, as if everything was a conquest.

But religion always followed her, maybe that’s why she agreed to find the dead religious musician, who had no reports of even a proper crime scene. He was found dropped elsewhere with no traces of what had been done to him, but as days kept passing bible verses would show up on his body and she would recite them to me, while this friend of hers, who was smitten would nearly breathe on the receiver. I’ve seen her through photos… And then mom was invited to her wedding to another woman. She always felt like she was never enough, because the other was prettier, thinking it was the friend’s type. They did fuck a few times after she got wed, but soon enough the gig was over.

Because they ended it. I kept my eyes closed, feeling Trent’s fingers stroke my face with its permanent marks, which people ask me if it’s make up.

That’s how you end and exit gracefully, but I couldn’t do this to Trent. I didn’t even know where we were headed. What was supposed to be of us?

I quickly glanced at the television screen, showing people dead on the streets filled with C. NYC was turning into that. It was happening all over. I looked at Trent, but I couldn’t look at him, when he was filled with so much hope and sparkle, like that woman who loved mom. I remember that she was a bit tomboyish, her inner self shining brightly about the woman she was and she barely had any hate for everyone.

I remember me and mom had a massive fight, which unfolded accidentally in front of her.

“I wish I could give you my eyes, to see what your mother does.” She said, patting a young me on the head. She also felt very motherly. But I didn’t get to know her too well, which I guess was a shame now. I wondered where she was now. What would she say to me? Good on you, for letting your mother die? Or thank you?

I clicked my tongue a few times, recalling where she even lived the last time I saw her, as Trent was still engulfed in my existence. Maybe it would wear off like this, but I still blushed from the attention, even though it was silent for now.

“Hey Trent…” His attention was on me, like a guard’s dog, not to miss any word coming out of my mouth.

“Wanna see my mom’s last lover? Maybe she’s still alive?”

Trent’s eyes searched for a different answer from me, but the question was still on table.

If he wanted to see his mother again.

The love potion worked in such a way, that he still has his own will, but if something shields him, he will politely refuse or even speak up. Maybe I was trying to find a crack in the depressing path I had set up for myself.

Maybe seeing some genuine love would help me, I fiddled with my fingers… But then would Trent’s mom want to see him heels in love with me?

I was alone. Trent was a puppet.

I wanted to drive with Trent in the trunk until the potion would wear off, I wanted him to fight it, to see him break through his own skin, I didn’t want his love this way. But Trent had died, innerly, he could’ve been a tree, as his skin was more transparent with each day and veins were soon to be replaced with branches. I kept looking at his hands, holding them eventually, which led blood to flow normally again, as we stood on the crossroads, where the Devil once stood and shook his arms around, I could see him, while Trent kissed me, which took me by surprise and I kept watching the said demon overlord dance, when the light was red just for us and no cars. But you wouldn’t drive the Devil over, would you?

Maybe we all carry the dead. And chop down trees.


	5. Chapter 5

I wonder where did the activism go? People didn’t want the Amazon rainforest to be torched down or chopped off… Yet now, trees were everywhere, making the pines thicker. Now, they were finding rough bark to disguise the people, to make the world a bit less morbid, but I couldn’t understand why and who was doing it. It’s as if God himself had found time to bury his creation.

We drove through a thunderstorm, with lightning striking and igniting trees, cemeteries of fire. It wouldn’t matter – people would die, tear their clothes off and let the branches grow.

I felt uncomfortable with Trent’s love, almost like I didn’t want to be loved anymore. I couldn’t understand why love always had to be such a challenge for me. Now he was with me and he would look at me lovingly, telling me he would find ways for me to love him one way or another.

Ironic.

At least he kept it consensual, even if we opted for a couple’s bed at motels at Trent’s desire and my own idea of saving up money, though the currency was crashing. Who needed dollars anymore?

The vending machines which once sold masks now sold everything including heart-shaped glasses. I bought a pair for a quarter, when the room was a dollar, not expecting the price fall, but deciding that forever is a long time on Earth. That’s how long it’ll take for everyone to die, so gotta save up. I sat on one of those plastic chairs, while Trent seemed to be keen on fixing the television, probably to see how was Earth doing… With about 15% of the population extinct, if to look at numbers optimistically.

I wore the sunglasses simply to look at the forest fires and the thunder, which kept the receptionist lady on her toes.

I couldn’t accept love. When I was the racer I could, but not when I was being chased. I thought myself unworthy of it. I was an alien. I dunno why something like an aborted fetus of procreation, according to humans, made me attracted to them. I guess I could blame my mother.

I tried not to think of her, as my memories would all sober up with a shot of coffee.

I slowly went into the room to grab Trent’s cigarettes, watching him seem all content with being in love with me. He wouldn’t even remember his wife, fuck. I let myself out, as the wind got even worse and the trees next to us were slowly getting shredded by it.

Did I want humanity to die?

I don’t know.

Sometimes I felt bad, considering that they were all doomed now. Maybe that’s why I wanted to see their ending. But did I really?

I went back, Trent flicking through channels which now only showed news, occasionally announcing whoever was the new president, since they kept either fleeing to their islands or dying. I didn’t know the current man who acknowledged C., something the journalists were happy about. But then they always were happy. What’s there not to like? Report every dead body on the street, it’s still news. People watch people die. It’s fun to them.

“They’re trying to shut down everything.” Trent said from the bed.

“Pffft. What’s the point anymore? They should’ve done it when everyone said so. Now…” I quickly glance at Trent. “Better let everyone have a proper goodbye.”

“You really think there’s no way out?” He says it flatly, with a shade of blue on its side.

“Yeah.” I say, sighing. We both exchange looks, knowingly. I look away, as Trent realizes that death will catch up on him too. I rub the back of my neck. I should probably care more and take Trent out of this. But just like I can’t take my hands off him, despite everything, stroking the back of his neck…

I can’t take him out of the death spiral.

I run a line with my fingertips on the back of his neck… Where the first branch would grow. It’s a stiff neck. My heart starts pounding fast against my ribcage. My eyes widen. He looks back at me and I see how he looked like when he was younger. I blink and he’s back to his older, poisoned self…

I put my second hand on the back of his neck. I rub the tough part, my tears swelling up the skies.

I breathe harder, my throat choking me and I open up his neck. Trent’s screech fills up the room, his hands flailing and blood gushing. I press down the blood vessels, while picking out the leaf which he had contracted. It’s called a leaf because it’s a part of something bigger… C. The fall of humanity.

No Christ.

I pull it out, pressing Trent’s neck down. I take the bedsheets and wrap them around him, as the room goes dark, Trent looking at the leaf, something no one managed to get out. It’s absorbing all the light in the room before I crush it with my own bare hands, watching the dust try to crawl from my hands.

I hold it tight, as Trent keeps bleeding.

I press his wound again, as I slide fingers which I had licked off from the leaf remains, trying to tug veins, capillaries, the aorta and the likes together, as if playing with them, Trent choking…

And I’m done.

I step back and I watch Trent start coughing, shivering… Until the wound goes to a close.

He looks up at me.

I don’t want him to love me this way.

Because I can’t accept the love I don’t deserve. But he can’t die.

And we would be in this cycle… Me watching C. mutate as a disease and curing Trent every time as I refuse him, softly, just because he doesn’t love me the way I want him to.

Everything stops. The wound closes and Trent is still laying on his back and I see the room lit by the stars, as I lean down and hold Trent, who is unconscious. I close my own eyes as well, as a bright light fills the room. The television springs itself awake with the news blasting, I don’t know who rules America now, who really rules, who stepped down from the pandemic and who has died already.

The population is dying at an alarming rate.

What’s the point?

I look at Trent… Who will forever be under my spell just for his own peace, and I slowly let go, not realising that I’m crying. I start running as if I were in a dream to the forest, lights all up and all happens in a flash, as I hear TV static and I scream, crumble into a ball and cry further.

I look at the ground, the moist ground and the dried up grass, as the whole world is lit… It’s a matter of seconds.

Trent finds me, I feel him and he sits next to me. We look at each other. He can’t die from C. I can’t die from C.

He leans in to kiss me and so do I. This is how humanity never dies, promises never completed and oh, so blindly in love when you shouldn’t have learnt this emotion with all your heart, because the body couldn’t take it.

We lay down on the grass and watch the never-ending sky, at least until everyone is dead, so that when we leave…

What?

We can say we held until the end.

**Author's Note:**

> With the whole world collapsing... I´ve started on a few stories which have a dystopian theme in common and the disease C. in all of them which varies, all stories are just in the same set of parallel universes. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it and if you did, please tell me so, thank you. 
> 
> For my other work, and to know why I use AO3, see here: https://graspthesanity.wordpress.com/2019/06/09/why-i-use-ao3/


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